Tag: Syria

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A job seeker said she was advised to hide her ties to the Jewish community during an interview with a Dutch state-funded group trying to help Syrian immigrants integrate.

Laura Vrijsen, who is not Jewish, wrote earlier this month in the Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad weekly about her 2017 interview for Association Again at Home Rotterdam, prompting an outpouring of condemnations by politicians who accused the organization of discrimination. The association denied the allegations.

According to Vrijsen, the two women who interviewed her for a social worker’s position asked indirectly whether she was Jewish upon noticing that…

(JTA) – Seventeen Jewish groups, including the left-leaning J Street, called on the White House to dismiss Stephen Miller as senior policy adviser.

The organizations, including American Jewish World Service, Americans for Peace Now and T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, issued the call in an open letter they sent Thursday to the White House chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly.

The co-authors wrote that Miller, who favors an immigration reform he said would benefit applicants who would assimilate more easily into American society than others, has “extreme viewpoints and advocacy of racist policies.”

(JTA) — Europe has 3,318 synagogues, according to a new British organization that unveiled what it said was the first-ever pan-continental study of Jewish houses of worship.

The Foundation for Jewish Heritage, which was registered in the United Kingdom in 2015 and aims to help preserve and restore endangered European synagogues, commissioned the Center for Jewish Art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to tally and document Europe’s synagogues ahead of the foundation’s launch Wednesday in London, the foundation’s chief executive, Michael Mail, told JTA.

The results of the study, which took a year and a half to complete, are on display…

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The Netherlands and Belgium pledged a total of $38 million for the U.N. agency that provides aid to Palestinians following U.S. funding cuts of $110 million.

Belgium’s government pledged $23.3 million in extra funding for UNRWA and the Dutch government said it would fast-track another $15 million in funding.

The United States announced its cuts on Thursday. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters that a $45 million payment pledged for the UNRWA food aid program would not go through for the time being. Earlier this week, the U.S. said it would freeze $65 million pledged to the…

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the U.S. should transfer its funds away from a United Nations agency that deals specifically with Palestinian refugees to another UN body that supports all the world’s refugees.

Netanyahu at the start of Sunday’s weekly Cabinet meeting addressed U.S. threats to cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA.

The United States is the largest single donor to UNRWA, contributing $368 million of its $1.2 billion annual budget last year alone. The threat to cut U.S. funding to the…